The sad truth of the Las Vegas shootings? More Americans are killed by armed white men than Muslim terrorists

With his travel ban, rhetoric on the stump and controversial tweets, President Donald Trump may like to raise the specter of the threat raised by foreign terrorists, but the sad truth is that more Americans are likely to die at the hands of people who look just like them.

In a sobering report this morning, Vox.com crunches the numbers to find that white American men - like Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock - pose a bigger domestic terrorist threat than any foreign-born Muslim.

Yes, the Vox report does acknowledge that:

"Radical Islamic terrorists inspired or directed by groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda do pose a clear threat to the US. There is no question about that. Before last night's deadly shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history occurred in June 2016 when an ISIS-inspired man opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding 53."

But in the first eight months of Trump's administration, more Americans died at the hands of men who were born right here in the United States and have "no ties to religion generally, or Islamic extremism specifically," Vox reported.

A few examples:

"On Sunday night, Paddock opened fire on a crowd of more than 22,000 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing more than 50 and wounding more than 200.

In August, a 20-year-old white Nazi sympathizer from Ohio sped his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing a woman and injuring at least 19 others.

In June, a 66-year-old white man from Illinois shot at Republican Congress members during an early morning baseball practice, severely wounding several people including Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House of Representatives Majority Whip.

In March 2017, a 28-year-old white man from Baltimore traveled to New York City with the explicit aim of killing black men. He stabbed 66-year-old Timothy Caughman to death and was charged with terrorism by New York state authorities.

In May, a 35-year-old white man from Oregon named Jeremy Joseph Christian began harassing Muslim teenagers on a train in Portland, telling them "We need Americans here!" Two men interceded; Christian then stabbed and killed them both."

In fact, "between 2001 and 2015, more Americans were killed by homegrown right-wing extremists than by Islamist terrorists, according to a study by New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC.," Vox reported.

John L. Micek | jmicek@pennlive.com

What's more, "none of the perpetrators of the major US terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam in the past 15 years have come from the nations on Trump's travel ban (either the original one or the new, revised version that was released late last month). In fact, the country home to the biggest number of terrorists who have carried out successful attacks inside the US is the US itself," Vox found.

Finally, "the average likelihood of an American being killed in a terrorist attack in which an immigrant participated in any given year is one in 3.6 million --even including the 9/11 deaths," Vox reported.